Mild to Spicy Recipes

Mild Spanish smoked paprika—also called pimentón—gives dishes an appealing smokiness. Using the sweetest, ripest tomatoes in season, Melissa Rubel Jacobson makes a simple yet luscious soup flavored with smoked paprika and served with crunchy cheese toasts.

Delicious Vegetable Soups

A bold mixture of red-pepper flakes, garlic, thyme, lemon juice, and olive oil serves as a spicy marinade for bone-in chicken breasts. If you want your chicken spicier still, increase the red pepper or leave the breasts in the marinade for an hour or two.

Plus: More Chicken Recipes and Tips

In matching spicy sausage with a creamy mustard sauce and fragrant basil, British cookbook author Nigel Slater created a quick pasta supper with warm, mildly spicy flavors.

Chef Laurent Tourondel uses a cured pork sausage flavored with fennel seed, anise and garlic in this hearty chili.

More Amazing Chili Recipes

Eco-minded chefs are cooking with wild American shrimp, but not just for ethical reasons. As Tory McPhail of Commander's Palace in New Orleans says, "They taste cleaner and crisper, since they swim in the tides."

Cajun and Creole Classics

Bobby Flay makes this extremely good barbecue sauce by spiking tomato puree with two forms of smoky chile—ancho chile powder and chipotle in adobo sauce—then adding peanut butter for sweetness. The sauce takes some time to prepare, but by doubling the recipe, it can be made in one large batch and kept in the refrigerator for up to two months.

10 Incredible Burgers

Vikram Sunderam relies on plenty of spices, like cardamom, cloves and cumin, to flavor this succulent lamb stew (the name translates roughly into "red lamb"). To make it even easier, use Madras curry powder, a spice blend, in place of the individual spices.

Plus: F&W's Chicken Cooking Guide

After opening his first restaurant, Lafitte's Landing, chef John Folse sought out a hot sauce that he could use in his elegant French-Cajun dishes. He automatically thought of the long skinny bottle of Louisiana Hot Pepper Sauce that was a staple on his family's dinner table because it seemed to go with everything. Folse located that sauce, but found that he liked a Tabasco-mixed chile version, called Louisiana Gold Pepper Sauce, even better. He particularly liked that its pure chile flavor was not masked by the addition of vinegar which he thinks interferes with the subtle flavors of foods like the buttery crab and andouille sauce that tops the succulent sauéed snapper here.

Bartender Anna Vanderzee suggests making the mix for this recipe one day in advance to allow the spices and horseradish to marry with the tomato juice.

These crispy chicken wings get their heat from Sriracha, the Thai hot sauce that chef Michael Symon says is his favorite in the world. "We always have a couple of extra bottles at home, because my stepson blows right through the stuff."

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